Schooners and Ketches: The best 2 masted boats!

Schooners and Ketches are my favorites.

I have always thought schooners and Ketches were the nicest looking sailboats. They are sleek, look fast, can be fitted with a lot of sails, and look romantic. They just look all business weather for fishing or cargo, or cruising or even a pirate ship. Sleek and romantic have to be the best adjectives for them.

I like the looks of a schooner better than a ketch. The schooner is or looks more sleek as a rule. I say as a rule because there are so many configurations of the two boats. Both boats have long histories of development and they were developed and tuned to do specific jobs well. Schooners and ketches were favored sailing vessels of the Dutch in the 16^th and 17^th century. The number of variations of these boats shows how versatile they are.

A Schooner is a sailing vessel with fore and aft sails, with two or more masts. The forward mast is shorter or the same height as the other masts. 

  

A ketch is a sailing vessel with fore and aft sails, with two masts and the main mast (front mast) is taller than the mizzen mast (rear mast). The mizzen mast is also forward of the boat's rudder.

A Yawl is like a Ketch but the mizzen mast is aft of the rudder. In a Ketch the mizzen mast sail provides push to the boat, but in a Yawl it is used to trim your course.

Most schooners and many ketches are gaff rigged boats. This allows for shorter masts and large sails, and can have additional top sails and other sails. These boats can have the gaff rigged main and foresails, jibs, forestay-sails, staysails, jib topsails, spinnakers, as well as specialty sails like water-sails, storm sails, try-sails and golliwobblers.  All these types of sails lets these boats be functional and unique.

With our little schooner, we found dealing with the jib, main and foresail more than enough for a crew of two to deal with. I would like to sail on a larger schooner with a full complement of topsails and staysails, with a crew that knew what they were doing, to see what it would be like. It would have to be an adrenalin rush and a feel of speed.

With our schooner, the best point of sail is down wind. She is fast and a picture on the water. The best point of sail windward is a close reach. She does not sail well close hauled. If you stall out when you tack, she stops going forward and can go backwards well.  8-) Tacking smartly with a schooner takes skill and practice.

I can see why a schooner would be “ni-uncatchable” downwind if a square rigger was trying to catch her. I can see my little red schooner with a canon, a pirate flag, and a salty crew. Arg…where is the rum!